Presenting the World Champion Invitational 2020 by Victory Road

Victory Road is thrilled to present the first-ever World Champion Invitational event! On December 28, 2019, all Pokémon VGC Champions in this decade will play for $1000 in prizes in Pokémon Sword and Shield, under the VGC 2020 ruleset — live for everyone in the world to enjoy!

We’re bringing you the most international VGC stream on history, with 4 streams featuring all the action in English, as well as dedicated coverage in all Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese. We will also feature various giveaways on our social media accounts as the tournament progresses.

Find all details on the show in this article!

The Champions

The main stars of the show will be, of course, the 8 World Champions of the decade!

Ray Rizzo (2010-12)

Arash Ommati (2013)

Sejun Park (2014)

​Shoma Honami (2015)

​Wolfe Glick (2016)

​Ryota Otsubo (2017)

​Paul Ruiz (2018)

​​Naoto Mizobuchi (2019)

Ray Rizzo (2010-12)

Arash Ommati (2013)

Sejun Park (2014)

Shoma Honami (2015)

​Wolfe Glick (2016)

​Ryota Otsubo (2017)

​Paul Ruiz (2018)

​​Naoto Mizobuchi (2019)

Who do you think it’s going to win? Participate on our Twitter giveaway and win an AVerMedia capture card, copies of Pokémon Sword/Shield and other merchandise!

Vote for your favorite player to win our #PokemonChampionsVR Invitational and enter this giveaway!

The Format

All 8 Champions will compete using the latest installment in the main series of the RPG, Pokémon Sword and Shield. We will be using the VGC 2020 ruleset with the Gigamax Pokémon allowed at the time of the tournament.

The tournament will consist on two phases:

Pools: all players will be randomly drawn into two pools of 4, where they will play a Bo3 set against the other 3. From there, the two winning the most matches will advance into play-offs.

Should there be a tie there, the following conditions will be used as a tiebreaker.

1. Match wins amongst tied players

2. Individual games defferential amongst tied players

3. Total games diffeerential in respective group

4. head-to-head bo3 match (triangular in case of tryple tie)

5. In case of triangular tie, individual games from this matches will be taken as tie breaker

6. In case of tie in point 5, a second head-to-head BO1 match will be played

7. In case of a second triangualr BO1 tie, total Pokemon remaining from in those last BO1 matches will be taken as the last tie breaker. A triangular tie breaker would mean that all three players would have won 1 battle and loses the other. number of Pokémon remaining in the game they won will be taken

8. In case of same number of Pokemon remaining, total %HP from all 4 Pokémon in those last BO1 matches will be taken as the last tie breaker. %HP of the Pokémon remaining in the game they won will be taken (defined as ‘actual sum of HP from all Pokemon after last turn’ / ‘total HP of Pokemon the winner brought to the battle.’ Player final rank will be defined based on that %.

Play-offs: the top seed from pool A will face the 2nd seed from pool B (and vice-versa) in a Bo3 set for the semi-finals. The two losers will play a Bo3 losers finals right before the top 2 Champions fight for glory in a Bo5 finals!

Prizes

Champions will compete for the following prizes:

Winner: $600

Runner-up: $300

3rd place: $100

These prizes will be awarded directly by Victory Road.

Watch Live!

Stream times

The event will take place all during Saturday, December 28th. Live streams will begin at 1 PM UTC, that is:

EST: 8 am

CET: 2 pm

JST/KST: 10 pm

Dedicated coverage

You will be able to watch ALL games from the event streamed in English, commentated by some of the most renown faces in the community!

Our partners

This event is sponsored by Avermedia (Capture Card provider) and Frikiwars (dedicated products store). As the event approaches and during the show, we will giveaway various goodies to spectators all over the World thanks to them!